1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disc drive device for recording and/or reproducing an information signal to/from an optical disc, and more particularly to a slot-in type disc drive device.
2. Description of the Related Art
As an optical disc, an optical disc, such as a CD (Compact Disc), a DVD (Digital Versatile Disc), a magneto-optical disc, such as an MO (Magneto optical), an MD (Mini Disc), etc. are, heretofore, known widely. Various disc drive devices corresponding to these discs, disc cartridges, etc., are appeared.
The disc drive device includes a type for mounting a disc directly on a turntable by opening a cover or a door provided in a housing, a type for automatically mounting a disc on a turntable when a disc tray is drawn by placing the disc in the disc tray horizontally outputted from and inputted into a housing, and a type for mounting a disc directly on a turntable provided in this disc tray, and so on. However, any of the above types require operations of opening or closing the cover or the door, inputting and outputting the disc tray, and mounting the disc on the turntable.
On the other hand, there is so-called a slot-in type disc drive device which automatically mounts a disc on a turntable merely by inserting the disc from a disc insertion/removal slot provided on the front surface of a housing. When the disc is inserted from the disc insertion/removal slot in this disc drive device, operations below are performed. That is, a loading operation of drawing the disc inserted from the disc insertion/removal slot into the housing by rotating a pair of guide rollers in a reverse direction with each other while sandwiching the disc between the pair of the guide rollers opposed to one another, and an ejection operation of discharging the disc from this disc insertion/removal slot to the exterior of the housing, are performed.
Incidentally, a mobile device in which the disc drive device is mounted, such as, for example, a notebook-sized personal computer, etc., is required to be further small in size, lightweight and thin. Accordingly, the demand for a small, lightweight and thin disc drive device is increased. Further, recently, the demand for a slot-in type disc drive device having good sense of operation is increased as compared with a tray type disc drive device which has been a main stream in a personal computer, etc.
However, in the slot-in type disc drive device, since the length of the above-mentioned pair of guide rollers becomes longer than the diameter of the disc, the size of the entire device in a width direction becomes long. Also, the disc is sandwiched between the pair of the guide rollers. Therefore, the size in the thickness direction becomes long. Therefore, the conventional slot-in type disc drive device has a disadvantage for a miniaturization and thinning.
Particularly, an ultra-thin type disc drive device to be mounted in a notebook-sized personal computer, etc., having a thickness of 12.7 mm is a standard size. Further, when the disc drive device is reduced in thickness to 9.5 mm that is a thickness equivalent to the hard disc drive (HDD) unit, it is very difficult to divert the guide rollers structurally.
Therefore, in this slot-in type disc drive device, there is proposed a disc drive device in which a plurality of rotary arms are disposed between the disc inserted from the disc insertion/removal slot and the base mounting the turntable on which the disc is mounted to respond to the request of the miniaturization and thinning. And the device performs a loading operation for drawing the disc from the disc insertion/removal slot into the housing while rotating a plurality of rotary arms in a plane parallel to the disc by using an energizing member, such as a coil spring, etc., and an ejection operation for discharging the disc from the disc insertion/removal slot to the exterior of the housing (for example, refer to Patent Document 1: Jpn. Pat. Appln. Laid-Open Publication No. 2002-117604).
In the disc drive device of this type, when the optical disc is discharged, it is required that the central hole of the disc is discharged outward from the disc insertion/removal slot. Further, it is also required that the disc itself does not drop from the disc insertion/removal slot.
Here, when various layers are laminated in a disc manufacturing process, there may be the case that a thickness error occurs with respect to the accuracy of the layer and a disc thinner than conventional thickness of 1.2 mm or a thick laminated disc is used. Further, a recording disc having a thickness of 1.5 mm is provided by laminating a DVD having a thickness of 0.6 mm of a recording layer and a CD having a thickness of 0.9 mm of a recording layer. Then, a disc drive device for recording and/or reproducing a recording disc having a thickness of 1.5 mm in addition to the conventional disc having the thickness of 1.2 mm is desired. Then, even in such a disc drive device, it is necessary to discharge the disc in an optimum discharge amount for each disc irrespective of the differences of the thicknesses and the weights of the corresponding discs.
However, the disc drive device discharges the disc by using only a spring force by an energizing member, such as a coil spring for rotatably energizing a rotary arm. Accordingly, when the thicknesses and the weights of the discs are different, the spring force of the energizing member cannot be controlled. Therefore, it is difficult to provide the optimum discharge amounts in respective discs.